biography literature

Hardcover. London, The Cresset Press, 1st UK, 1953, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 189 pages. 3rd volume of the autobiography of this celebrated thinker and writer on philosophical and metaphysical matters. The greater part deals with the period he spent in England, in Oxford, Cambridge and elsewhere, and his circle of brilliant friends and acquaintances.

Hardcover. NY, Henry Holt, 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 306 pages. There have long been rumors of a lost cache of tapes containing private conversations between Orson Welles and his friend the director Henry Jaglom, recorded over regular lunches in the years before Welles died. The tapes, gathering dust in a garage, did indeed exist, and this book reveals for the first time what they contain. Here is Welles as he has never been seen before: talking intimately, disclosing personal secrets, reflecting on the highs and lows of his astonishing career, the people he knew-FDR, Winston Churchill, Charlie Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich, Laurence Olivier, David Selznick, Rita Hayworth, and more-and the many disappointments of his last years. This is the great director unplugged, free to be irreverent and worse-sexist, homophobic, racist, or none of the above- because he was nothing if not a fabulator and provocateur. Ranging from politics to literature to the shortcomings of his friends and the many films he was still eager to launch, Welles is at once cynical and romantic, sentimental and raunchy, but never boring and always wickedly funny.

Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In 1942, a timid, inexperienced twenty-one-year-old Lord reports to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to enlist in the US Army. This title tells the story of this young man's exposure to the terrors, dislocations, and horrors of armed conflict. Along the way he comes to terms with his own sexuality, experiences the thrill of first love and the chill of disillusionment with his fellow man, Clean copy.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Chilton Book Company, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 383 pages. Hardcover. 8 pages of black & white photographs. Foxing to top edge. Light wear to dust jacket edges. Clean, unmarked pages.

Hardcover. NY, Scribner , 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Novelist and critic Colm Toibin provides "a fascinating exploration of writers and their families" (Entertainment Weekly) and "an excellent guide through the dark terrain of unconscious desires" (The Evening Standard) in this brilliant collection of essays that explore the relationships of writers to their families and their work. Colm Toibin--celebrated both for his award-winning fiction and his provocative book reviews and essays--traces the intriguing, often twisted family ties of writers in the books they leave behind. Through the relationship between W. B. Yeats and his father, Thomas Mann and his children, Jane Austen and her aunts, and Tennessee Williams and his sister, Toibin examines a world of relations, richly comic or savage in their implications. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Seattle, WA, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 192 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy. Black and white pictures throughout. The author's memoir of the seven years spent in collaboration with

Hardcover. Seattle, WA, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 192 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy. Black and white pictures throughout. The author's memoir of the seven years spent in collaboration with Burroughs.

Hardcover. Boston, David R. Godine, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 391 pages. INSCRIBED BY PAYNE on the half-title page and also SIGNED on the title page. In Orion on the Dunes, the first biography of Beston, scholar Daniel Payne-granted unrestricted access to the writer's archives and drawing on interviews with friends and family-has crafted a scrupulously researched narrative; one presenting a masterful portrait that traces the intellectual growth and tumultuous life of a vital American writer whose work and thought have exerted a tremendous pull on poets, naturalists, and novelists alike. This is the story of a life, at once hidden and transparent, that is here finally revealed. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, David R. Godine, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 391 pages, b&w illustrations. INSCRIBED BY PAYNE on half title page and SIGNED again on title page. The first biography of the writer/naturalist, and one of the leading founders of the modern environmental movement, Henry Beston. Scholar Daniel Payne-granted unrestricted access to the writer's archives and drawing on interviews with friends and family-has crafted a scrupulously researched narrative; one presenting a masterful portrait that traces the intellectual growth and tumultuous life of a vital American writer whose work and thought have exerted a tremendous pull on poets, naturalists, and novelists alike. This is the story of a life, at once hidden and transparent, that is here finally revealed. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Rutland VT, Chas. E. Tuttle Co., reprint, 1936, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn and chipped dust jacket. Fine green textured cover with gilt to front and spine. Foreword by Arthur Schomburg, Robinson biography by Mary Robinson Perkins. A collection of tales capturing the essence of 19th-century rural life, primarily set in Vermont. These stories explore themes of freedom, community, and the challenges of everyday existence with a distinct American voice. Robinson's vivid descriptions and engaging characters provide a window into a bygone era, making this collection a valuable contribution to American literature. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 1983, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Clean. "Once in a while a great book appears which through the author's strength of vision and freshness of language, allows is to see the world anew, OUT OF MY DEPTH--mixing memoir, sport, metaphysics, and playful contemption--is just a book. Several years ago noted author Paul West took a look at himself and saw a man who loved the water but couldn't swim." - dust jacket copy.

Hardcover. Lathem, New York, British American Publishing, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 269 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 347 pages. In 1971 Deirdre Bair was a journalist and recently minted Ph.D. who managed to secure access to Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett. He agreed that she could be his biographer despite her never having written--or even read--a biography before. The next seven years comprised of intimate conversations, intercontinental research, and peculiar cat-and-mouse games. Battling an elusive Beckett and a string of jealous, misogynistic male writers, Bair persevered. She wrote Samuel Beckett: A Biography, which went on to win the National Book Award and propel Deirdre to her next subject: Simone de Beauvoir. The catch? De Beauvoir and Beckett despised each other--and lived essentially on the same street. Bair learned that what works in terms of process for one biography rarely applies to the next. Her seven-year relationship with the domineering and difficult de Beauvoir required a radical change in approach, yielding another groundbreaking literary profile and influencing Bair's own feminist beliefs.Parisian Lives draws on Bair's extensive notes from the period, including never-before-told anecdotes. This gripping memoir is full of personality and warmth and gives us an entirely new window on the all-too-human side of these legendary thinkers.

Hardcover. NY, Liveright Publishing , 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Published on the centenary of her birth, Patricia Highsmith's diaries "offer the most complete picture ever published" of the canonical author. Relegated during her lifetime to the pulpy genre of mystery, Patricia Highsmith has emerged since her death in 1995 as one of "our greatest modernist writers" (Gore Vidal). Presented for the first time, this one-volume assemblage of her diaries and notebooks -- posthumously discovered behind Highsmith's linens and culled from more than 8,000 pages by her devoted editor, Anna von Planta--traces the mesmerizing double-life of an artist who "[worked] like mad to be something." Beginning in 1941 during her junior year at Barnard, the diaries exhibit the intoxicating "atmosphere of nameless dread" (Boston Globe) that permeates classics such as Strangers on a Train and the Ripley series. In her skewering of McCarthy-era America, her prickly disparagement of contemporary art, her fixation on love and writing, and ever-percolating prejudices, the famously secretive Highsmith reveals the roots of her psychological angst and acuity. In one of the most compulsively readable literary diaries to publish in generations. Remainder dot to top edge, otherwise like new.

Hardcover. NY, Liveright Publishing , 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Published on the centenary of her birth, Patricia Highsmith's diaries "offer the most complete picture ever published" of the canonical author. Relegated during her lifetime to the pulpy genre of mystery, Patricia Highsmith has emerged since her death in 1995 as one of "our greatest modernist writers" (Gore Vidal). Presented for the first time, this one-volume assemblage of her diaries and notebooks -- posthumously discovered behind Highsmith's linens and culled from more than 8,000 pages by her devoted editor, Anna von Planta -- traces the mesmerizing double-life of an artist who "[worked] like mad to be something." Beginning in 1941 during her junior year at Barnard, the diaries exhibit the intoxicating "atmosphere of nameless dread" (Boston Globe) that permeates classics such as Strangers on a Train and the Ripley series. In her skewering of McCarthy-era America, her prickly disparagement of contemporary art, her fixation on love and writing, and ever-percolating prejudices, the famously secretive Highsmith reveals the roots of her psychological angst and acuity. In one of the most compulsively readable literary diaries to publish in generations. Remainder dot to top edge, otherwise like new.

Hardcover. Syracuse University Press , 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 493 pages. Remainder line and foxing to top edge, light edgewear to dust jacket, else a clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, New York Review Books, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 448 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. SIGNED BY AUTHOR ON TITLE PAGE. Black and white photos in center. Two pages wrinkled and stuck together in the middle of picture pages. Otherwise tight.

Hardcover. NY, Harper Collins, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 233 pages. Authors, illustrators, and poets describe their childhoods, approaches to creating children's books, and career paths.

Hardcover. NY, Harcourt, Inc., 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Nobel Prize winning author Gunter Grass' autobiography causing controversy because of his admission of volunteering for the submarine corps at the age of 15 and then being drafted into the Waffen SS, the combat force of the SS, in 1944 when he was 17. Much of the German novelist's work has dealt with the idea of morally dealing with one's past, in this case Germany's collective conscious. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Longmans Green & Co., 1st US, 1947, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a chipped, worn dust jacket, 303 pages."Charles Pierre Peguy (1873- 1914) was a noted French poet, essayist, and editor. His two main philosophies were socialism and nationalism, but by 1908 at the latest, after years of uneasy agnosticism, he had become a believing but non-practicing Roman Catholic. From that time, Catholicism strongly influenced his works. From his earliest years, he was influenced by socialism. He joined the Socialist Party in 1895. From 1900 until his death in 1914, he was the main contributor to and the editor of the literary magazine Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine, which at first supported the Socialist Party director Jean Jaures. However, Peguy ultimately ended this support after he began viewing Jaures as a traitor to the nation and to socialism. In the Cahiers, Peguy published not only his own essays and poetry, but also works by important contemporary authors such as Romain Rolland. His free-verse poem, "Portico of the Mystery of the Second Virtue", has gone through more than 60 editions in France."Charles Pierre Peguy (1873- 1914) was a noted French poet, essayist, and editor. His two main philosophies were socialism and nationalism, but by 1908 at the latest, after years of uneasy agnosticism, he had become a believing but non-practicing Roman Catholic. From that time, Catholicism strongly influenced his works. From his earliest years, he was influenced by socialism. He joined the Socialist Party in 1895. From 1900 until his death in 1914, he was the main contributor to and the editor of the literary magazine Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine, which at first supported the Socialist Party director Jean Jaures. However, Peguy ultimately ended this support after he began viewing Jaures as a traitor to the nation and to socialism. In the Cahiers, Peguy published not only his own essays and poetry, but also works by important contemporary authors such as Romain Rolland. His free-verse poem, "Portico of the Mystery of the Second Virtue", has gone through more than 60 editions in France.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st US, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 512 pages, b&w illustrations. Penelope Fitzgerald was a great English writer whose career didn't begin until she was nearly sixty. She would go on to win some of the most coveted awards in literature--the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Now, in an impeccable match of talent between biographer and subject, Hermione Lee, a master biographer and one of Fitzgerald's greatest champions, gives us this remarkable writer's story. Lee's critical expertise is on dazzling display on every page, as it illuminates this extraordinary English life. Fitzgerald, born into an accomplished intellectual family, the granddaughter of two bishops, led a life marked by dramatic twists of fate, moving from a bishop's palace to a sinking houseboat to a last, late blaze of renown. We see Fitzgerald's very English childhood in the village of Hampstead; her Oxford years, when she was known as the "blonde bombshell"; her impoverished adulthood as a struggling wife, mother and schoolteacher, raising a family in difficult circumstances; and the long-delayed start to her literary career.

Hardcover. NY, Harper & Brothers , 1st, 1940, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket. 303 pages. Beach was a popular writer of adventure stories. Here he tells his own tale, more colorful, humorous and adventurous than his novels. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Charles E. Goodspeed, 1st, 1901, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 71 pages, number 410 of a 500. French hand-made paper, printed by D. B. Updike at the Merrymount Press. Illustrated with one plate and two facsimiles of Thoreau's journal. Gray-green boards with a beige cloth spine with a paper label. Spine and covers darkening, light shelf wear.

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st, 1944, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a worn, chipped dust jacket, 262 pages. Scribner's colophon but no "A". Assumed Book Club Ed. with no price on flap. Clean copy.